I'll probably see it in 3D once, but 2D is by far my preference. Not because I don't love 3D (I take stereo photos as a hobby) but because the clunky glasses really distract me, especially when I have to hold them up with my hands as they slip off my nose.

As mentioned elsewhere, the mere thought of three hours 3D makes me want to run for the woods. Also, the Hobbit is now confirmed to be shown in my local cinema, where I'm allowed to take any seat not occupied by a paying customer whenever I wish. So I can watch it over and over again *yay* The only drawback is that I will have to watch the dubbed version.

me too... although it will be what my theater offers at the time I want to go
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It will have to be a time that works for the family so I'm not going to insist on some format and exclude family members. There will be time to see other formats if I want.

I think we will all want to catch 3D and as for the other bells and whistles... I don't know how much I care. It would be interesting to compare not interesting enough to spend gobs o' money doing that.

What does taking stereo photos entail? A special camera I imagine? How do you view and display them?

On occasion, I've gotten spectacular views in my binoculars and wished I could have taken a stereo photograph.

I wear glasses, so I have to do the glasses-on-top-of-glasses thing at the theater, but this doesn't really bother me at all. Well, I much prefer RealD to IMAX 3D since IMAX 3D had a lot of problems with ghosting the one time I saw a film in that format. I'm guessing the polization might have been less advanced - I know the glasses were different. I've never had a similar problem with RealD.

We use whatever camera we have on hand. You take one photo, and then move over a few inches and take another photo of the same scene. You'll want to use a vertical orientation ("portrait" rather than "landscape"). We used to mount the photos on cardboard and view them in an old stereoscope that was my great-grandmother's. But later we found some cheap plastic viewers online. I've lost the original website, but it was something like this one: http://www.3dstereo.com/viewmaster/svn-lorg.html. We've also taken to putting two digital photos side-by-side using Paint-shop Pro and viewing them online.

I'm able to make my eyes go wall-eyed and view stereo slides without any equipment at all, but the plastic viewers work well and only cost $3 or so.

I don't have any examples of my work in the computer; it's been a long time. I'll have to scan some of my old photos and put them up. Maybe over Thanksgiving break I'll get that done.

Those are pretty cool. I can easily shift my eyes to view them without glasses. I might have to try a similar process sometime.

The only main limitation I see is that this can't be used for subjects that move outside of your control. I've wanted to take stereo photos of animals in their native habitats before and the only way to do that would be to find one that stayed in the same position or moved back to the same position. Should be a fun little expiriment in any case, though!

The trees and rocks look great, but the water is funny. We also have a few where a family member moved and those look funny too.

There are special 3D cameras where you have two cameras and one trigger. Or you could hold two cameras and try to press the trigger on both of them at the same time, I suppose, except those doggone digital cameras have a time lag.

When I posted these elsewhere, someone mentioned that a modern trend is to make a moving gif file that alternates between the two views. The motion gives an impression of 3D. This page has several examples. And I replied that that's why video can give a pretty good impression of 3D even when it's 2D. If you move past a landscape while taking video, the background moves more slowly than the foreground, giving a pretty good 3D effect. Which in turn is why I feel like 3D in movies isn't that important. If they ever come up with a really good method, I think it would be fun, but right now I prefer 2D movies.

But there have been several I've seen that haven't been good. I also don't have much hope for 3D conversions - if Cameron can't do it well (Titanic), I'm not sure anyone can. Not that I think Cameron is a great filmmaker, but he certainly seems to understand how to make 3D movies (Avatar).

It's interesting that we've broken down almost 50/50 in terms of 3D vs. 2D. I wonder if this means that The Hobbit will have a 50% split between the two? I'm guessing it'll be higher if the 3D is good, which I expect it will be. We'll see, though.

As for gifs - I've noticed this effect when paging through my photos sometimes. I prefer a stereogram to an animated gif, though - maybe that's part of why I love 3D movies? I just wish there were more good movies in 3D. I fear I'm in the minority, though.

As for me I intend to see it in RealD 3D. That's the technology they use here in town and in the city which I'll probably go (if things go as planned) to see it in English original version. I had a cool 3D experience seeing Avatar in RealD and if The Hobbit can be in that level I'll be satisfied. If the film is good, I consider a second viewing this time in 2D in my local town.

As much as I hate even regular 3D it doesn't matter as long as I get to see the movies as quick as possible LOL. So for the UEJ I watched 3D 48 and hated it, but I got to see the movie. So I saw the movie in 2D a week later.